


Along the Way

by flyby



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn
Genre: Community: khrfest, Gen, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-06
Updated: 2010-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-12 11:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyby/pseuds/flyby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anyone who didn't know him would think nothing was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Along the Way

**Author's Note:**

> Written for khrfest, for the prompt _Yamamoto/Gokudera - first aid; just call me and I will carry you all the way home._
> 
> Set in some nebulous post-Inheritance Arc timescale; refers heavily to events of chapters 293-295.

**Along the Way**

Anyone who didn't know him would think nothing was wrong. Hayato scowls, flipping an unlit cigarette in his fingers as he leans against the entrypost, watching Yamamoto work slowly through his kata. The idiot's movements are careful, methodical, practiced, his stance balanced and his brow furrowed as he devotes all his attention to his movements. That much, Hayato thinks, is pretty standard Yamamoto. What pisses him off, what makes his teeth dig into his lip and his fingers twitch to ball into fists, is the thread of barely-there hesitation that runs through every move Yamamoto makes.

He hates it. This deliberate movement, such a poor imitation of the moron's usual – his _former_ – fluid grace; the way the practice sword never quite reaches the apex of its extension. It makes Hayato's stomach coil up into a knot of seething, acidic rage, so that he doesn't even know whether to be angry with Yamamoto or with the bastard who did this to him.

"Don't fucking push yourself, idiot," is all he says, because Yamamoto is starting to look a little pale, like he'd be shaking if he wasn't so focused on his movements, like he's starting to get distracted by pain. Frowning, Hayato fishes through his pockets for his lighter, turning away to stand on the edge of the veranda looking out. It's been fucking shitty weather for most of the day, but now it's getting on towards evening the clouds have thinned out a bit, showing patches of sky. Everything out here smells of damp wood and green things, droplets and puddles decorating every stem and leaf and soaking the hems of his pants when he drops down to sit on the edge.

"I'm not going to get better if I don't put the work in," the idiot says behind him, voice light if breathy with effort. Hayato is grimly certain he can hear the strain beneath the cheerful tone, but if there's one thing he knows about Yamamoto it's that the idiot will go his own way. Fuck if he has to watch him push it too far, though; if he lands himself back in the hospital, Hayato thinks, lighting up with an irritated puff of smoke, he can blame his own moronic self. (All the same, if he so much as looks like he's going to do something that will worry the Tenth, Hayato's fully prepared to fling himself bodily in Yamamoto's path.)

"Whatever," he mutters, breathing out smoke and listening to the sound of the wooden sword splitting air behind him. The rhythm is off, and it makes him scowl because damn it, it's only been half a year. Yamamoto still spends his Fridays after school at the physiotherapist's office instead of baseball practice, and Hayato doesn't care how amazed they all are with his progress, this type of injury isn't something he can just recover from like that. He'd done the research, back when – when the idiot had still been in the hospital. He knows more than he wants to about muscle tissue knitting and scar formation, about just how much of a miracle it is that Yamamoto is even _walking_. It makes him sick, the idiot makes him sick; he always, always manages to surpass everyone's fucking expectations, always and inevitably better than Hayato, but Hayato can't even even hate him for it, now. Every fucking smile on the idiot's face (when he should be afraid, should be in pain, should be fucking _angry_ at what's been done to him) twists him up inside. He grinds his teeth as the rhythm behind him falters with a quiet hiss, and stares out at the water dripping off the trees until Yamamoto pads carefully out to join him on the veranda.

"Time to take a break!" the idiot announces cheerfully, and Hayato twists to glower at him over his shoulder as he gingerly folds himself down to sit on the polished wooden floorboards, his back against the wall.

"Tch." Hayayto takes a last drag on his cigarette, flinging the end out to extinguish itself in the damp undergrowth. "If you freak the Tenth out again by pushing it too hard..."

"It's fine, it's fine." Yamamoto, when Hayato glances over, has a hand pressed to his side, a faint smile on his face. "I'm all healed. I just need to build up my stamina, right?"

"Bullshit," Hayato scoffs, nettled. "Overdo it and you'll wind up back in the hospital, moron. I'll kick your ass myself before I see you do that to the Tenth."

"Maa, I won't upset Tsuna, it's okay." Yamamoto tips his head back against the wall, looking out at the patchwork sky. "You don't need to worry either, Gokudera."

"Who's fucking worried?" Hayato snaps, shifting so he can glare at Yamamoto properly.

"It's okay," Yamamoto repeats in a conciliatory voice that just makes Hayato want to punch him.

"The hell it is," he bites out flatly. "You almost got killed, you idiot; how the fuck is that ever going to be okay?" _You scared us_ , he wants to say. _You really fucking scared us, and the Tenth cried over you, and you still move like you expect it to hurt, like you can't stop yourself from holding back._

"But I'm fine now, see?" Yamamoto pushes himself carefully to his feet, shuffling over to drop down beside Hayato. "Or at least, I will be. Promise!"

"Just – shut up," Hayato growls, scooting back a little. With the idiot so close he feels claustrophobic, like Yamamoto with his easy smiles and his stupid optimism will encroach on his space until he has nothing left. "Why the fuck aren't you _angry_?" he demands, pissed off and uncomfortable and confused, and how is it that it's always and only Yamamoto who does this to him? Fucking baseball freak.

"Haa." Yamamoto leans back on his hands, blinking up at the sky. "What would be the point? Getting angry isn't going to help me get back in shape any quicker."

"Moron," Hayato grumbles, turning away and fumbling for another cigarette to hide the way his hands want to shake. The idiot is close enough that Hayato can smell him, the sweat of hard training undercut with the sour medicinal smell that seems to linger around him these days, that always makes Hayato think of white bandages and rough hospital sheets, the way he'd looked so small in the hospital bed surrounded by wires and tubes and beeping machines.

"Haha." Yamamoto rubs the back of his head, grinning at him like a fool. "I can't let you guys get too far ahead of me, can I?"

Hayato almost bites through his cigarette, has to snatch it out of his mouth before he burns himself. "Fucking idiot, is that why you're pushing yourself?" he demands, because it makes far too much sense and he doesn't like it at all. "Who the hell do you think we – do you think the _Tenth_ is?" he corrects himself, seething; Yamamoto holds up his hands, placatory and half-laughing, but damn it he has some momentum built up now and he's going to fucking say this or explode. "You're _Family_ , shit-for-brains, or did you forget that? The Tenth isn't just going to up and leave you behind, even if he ought to because you're making a fucking liability of yourself by pretending everything's just fucking peachy and nothing happened!" He's out of breath, he realises distantly, halfway up on his knees and shouting while Yamamoto blinks at him. "It's not fucking okay! Anyone can see that, you idiot! Just – stop fucking pretending it doesn't hurt. Or that you aren't holding back," he ends in a mumble, taking a long drag of smoke to try and clear his head. "It's dumb, and anyone who knows you can see it."

There's a long silence, so long that eventually Hayato has to look, a flick of a glance to the side, wondering whether he's succeeded for the second time in his life at actually making Yamamoto angry. Instead of furrowed brows, though, Yamamoto is just looking at him, clear-eyed and calm.

"If I'm allowed to say that it hurts, then Gokudera's allowed to say that he cares," he says, quiet and devastating; Hayato flinches, scrambling to his feet.

"Fuck you." He's breathing hard, he discovers. This damned asshole – he hadn't seen himself, sunken-eyed and barely breathing in a hospital bed; he still thinks this is a fucking game. "Just – fuck you. Do whatever the hell you want." And he turns on his heel, almost tripping down the stairs in his haste to get away from Yamamoto's voice calling after him.

* * *

Really, Hayato would be the first to admit that his coping methods aren't that healthy. It's just that when he's truly, ragingly pissed off, when he wants to spit on the world and grind it beneath his heel, there's nothing like a really fucking good explosion to settle his nerves. Part of it's the concentration required to calculate charges and blast radii and forces per square metre, to put the shit together when his hands know what they're doing better than his brain does and one slip could kill him before he even gets near an enemy. Partly it's the satisfied, sweaty glow of getting it just right, making it out of the blast field by the skin of his teeth and watching it burn. Mostly, though, it's just really fucking cathartic to blow shit up.

And then sometimes even dynamite is too much damn effort and the best way to let off some steam is to plant his fist in the face of the first fucker who looks at him wrong. Hayato grins, baring teeth at the bent-nosed thug who'd made the mistake of sneering at him as he passed, and puts all his weight behind his arm as he punches. Bone crackles and blood spurts beneath his knuckles; he doesn't have Lawnhead's fists but he's no fucking weakling either and his rings make for decent enough brass knuckles. His entire arm aches with the force of the blow; he pulls it back, levelling a kick to the opponent's midsection that sends him stumbling back, wheezing and dripping blood, into the crowd of his comrades.

"Tch." Hayato spits derisively, twisting his grin sardonically as he stares the rest of them down. All fucking muscle for brains and two-by-fours, not a decent opponent among the lot of them. "That all you've got, meathead?" he goads, and grins as two of them exchange looks before rushing him together, clumsy and uncoordinated. "Fucking pathetic." It's easy to duck under the one guy's swing, ramming his shoulder into an over-muscled chest and using his own momentum to kick his legs out from under him and send him sprawling into the other guy. That pretty much does it for the rest of them; they rush him in a ragged pack and it immediately becomes less of a fight and more an anarchic, flailing struggle of fists and elbows and knees. Hayato is starting to relax, finally; he takes a hard blow to the ribs and folds around it, splitting his knuckles on some fucker's jaw in retaliation, and he's just beginning to actually enjoy himself when some bright spark pulls a knife.

"Shit!" Hayato twists away from the first slash of the blade, tries to go for his box on the basis that getting injured in a nothing fight and upsetting the Tenth is just _not going to fucking happen_ , but one of the meatheads has him by the shoulder. He pulls up his other arm to block, trying to strike the blade aside, but he can't avoid the biting pain as the edge carves into the side of his fist.

"Fuck!" He balls up his fist – his left, and damn but that stings like a bitch – and strikes out at the bastard's knife hand, leaving a bloody smear as he knocks the blade skittering to the floor.

"Fucking little bitch!" the leader or whatever he is swears, and Hayato bares his teeth at him.

"Yeah? Think you're fucking man enough to mess with me?" He's about to add to that with a comment about the asshole's mother, purely for the principle of the thing, but before he can get his mouth around the words (Japanese is a shitty language to curse in) one of the milling meatheads he's mentally labelled as 'subordinates' makes an outraged noise and pulls out a gun. And after that it all gets a bit confusing as Hayato swears, and yanks his arm free to go for his box, and Yamamoto comes out of nowhere in a whirl of grim-faced death, taking out the gunman in an arc of steel and blood.

Hayato's just as fucking startled as the gang thugs who stand there gaping at the swordsman, because what the _holy fuck_ does the idiot think he's doing? He's not the Right Hand for nothing, though; he seizes the advantage and drives a sharp elbow into the gut of the guy behind him, then grabs at his shirt and _spins_ , slamming him headfirst into a wall. The guy drops like a sack of bricks, and in the meantime Yamamoto has taken out another two with an efficient sweep, Shigure Kintoki's silver-blue blade every bit as poised and precise as Hayato could ask for.

It's at that point that the boss – if these fuckers are even organised enough to be called a gang, which Hayato doubts – breaks, turning to run for it. Hayato gives a moment's serious consideration to firing up the Sistema C.A.I. anyway to show them who they're dealing with, because no one messes with the Vongola, but the rest of the rats follow the leader readily enough, dragging their unconscious comrades with them. Hayato snorts; fuck if they're worth his time.

"Shit," he mutters, leaning against the wall – somewhere in the warehouse district; he hadn't really been paying attention to where he was going – and examining his hand. He's bleeding, knuckles scraped and bruised and a slowing trickle oozing from the shallow slice down the outside of his palm. He's had worse from training.

"Gokudera, why are you picking fights with yakuza?" the idiot asks, curious and conversational as he examines his blade carefully before changing it back into a shinai. Hayato snorts, because he knows delinquent wannabes when he sees them.

"Piss-poor excuse for yakuza," he mutters, levelling a sharp-eyed glare at Yamamoto. "What the hell are you playing at, idiot?"

Yamamoto, to his grudging approval, doesn't play dumb with him for once. "It's fine, it's fine." He extends his arms, shifting from one foot to the other in demonstration. "No problem, see? Gokudera's the one who's bleeding."

"Tch." Hayato turns half away from him, examining the cut surreptitiously. "Shut up." It doesn't look deep enough to really need stitches, he decides, sifting through his pockets for a tissue or something. He'll patch it up with a bit of butterfly tape later, no problem.

"Oh wow, that looks pretty nasty." Without asking permission, without apology, Yamamoto crosses into his space, taking his wrist and turning his hand to the light. "We should fix it up properly – there's a first aid kit back at the dojo."

"Who asked for your help?" Hayato tries to yank his hand back, but it's kind of annoyingly painful and the idiot has a stupidly strong grip. "Let go," he orders grumpily, tugging. "It's nothing, I'll tape it up later."

"Hmm, nope," Yamamoto says cheerfully, smiling serenely in the face of Hayato's best glare as he rummages in the pocket of his jacket. "Ah, here." He produces an only-slightly-crumpled cloth, dark blue, that looks like a handkerchief or a furoshiki or something. "I don't have a bandage, but this'll work, right?"

Hayato levels an incredulous look at the idiot. "It has fucking cherry blossoms on it," he points out, slightly disbelieving, as Yamamoto releases him to fold the atrociously girly thing into a neat strip.

"Uh-huh." Yamamoto just grins at him, and Hayato rolls his eyes, suffering his left hand to be wrapped tightly – tightly enough that he hisses as Yamamoto tugs at the ends, putting pressure on the wound – with the abomination of flowery blue cotton.

"I'm not cleaning it," he mutters, flexing his hand experimentally as Yamamoto ties the end off neatly and tucks it under. Blood is starting to seep through slowly, darker spots flecking the fabric.

"Aa, it's fine." Yamamoto flashes him his usual easy grin, so perfectly infuriatingly Yamamoto that the sudden wash of surprise and pain that crumples his face as he starts to straighten up is somehow all the more shocking. He makes a startled, wordless sound, and it's like his legs just go out from under him; he sways, buckles, grabs for support.

"Shit!" Hayato lunges to catch the idiot's arm, heedless of his own bandaged hand. "Oi, baseball idiot!"

"...ahaha." Yamamoto laughs weakly; somehow he's ended up propped between Hayato on one side and Shigure Kintoki on the other. "Oops?" He tries to lever himself back to his feet, but Hayato can feel the fine tremors running through him. He knows this state, has been here himself when he's pushed too far and too fast and exhausted all reserves.

"Tch." Twisting a little awkwardly to avoid straining his bruised ribs too badly, he works his shoulder under Yamamoto's arm. "You're a fucking idiot; I told you not to push yourself."

"Ah, sorry." Yamamoto is really damn heavy; Hayato shifts his uninjured arm around the idiot's back to try and support him better. "Maybe I did overdo it a little, haha. I couldn't let Gokudera get hurt, though!"

"Moron," Hayato says, without much heat, because he's learned that there are some things he's just never going to pound into this idiot's head. "I can take care of myself." He shifts pointedly, and Yamamoto obediently starts walking, steps slow and most of his weight slumped onto Hayato's shoulders.

"Aa, but you shouldn't have to," Yamamoto says, seriously; when Hayato flicks a glance over at him his face is earnest and hopeful and just far too damn close. "Because you're Family, right?"

To his consternation, Hayato can actually feel his face heat at that. He turns his head away, silently cursing the idiot for having the temerity to use his own damn words against him. Who the fuck does he think he is, anyway? "Shut up and walk," he grumbles, and, "This would be easier if you weren't so damn tall."

"Haha." Bizarrely, the idiot actually sounds _happy_. Fucking incomprehensible muscle-head. Hayato scowls, and after another few careful steps he slants another half-glance up at Yamamoto.

"Thanks for showing up back there, I guess," he concedes ungraciously. Yamamoto is warm and solid and really fucking heavy against him, and it's a long damn way home, but he's not really sure he actually minds that much. Maybe he has been over-reacting, not that he's ever going to admit it. It's not like the idiot knows when to stop, whether it's baseball or training or just plain invading Hayato's personal space. Hayato's pretty sure he let himself in for it this time, though.

"Heh." Yamamoto's half-laugh vibrates through him as well, and Hayato flinches with the sudden chill as he pulls away a little, testing his balance. "I should be the one thanking you, for dragging me home like this. I think maybe I can try walking on my own, though?"

"Don't," Hayato orders, though it doesn't really seem like Yamamoto's arm across his shoulders is going anywhere soon. "You weigh a fucking ton; I can't carry you if you pass out from stupidity."

"Okay, okay," Yamamoto says peaceably. "Ah, Gokudera was right, though! I was holding back, before. I guess I was a little worried about pushing it too far, after all."

"Tch, whatever." Hayato glances up at the determination clearly visible on Yamamoto's face, inwardly a little relieved. If he's learned anything from all this shit, it's that there's no fucking point in doing things half-heartedly. He doesn't feel any particular need to tell him so, because for an idiot invalid he's smug enough already, but he figures Yamamoto might even have been right about him, as well. Maybe.


End file.
